Mark McGhee today revealed the Dons have been scouring England in the search for top young talent. The Dons attended the recent FA exit trials, where youngsters released by Premier League and Championship teams south of the border use the scheme in a bid to find a new club.

The trials were set up to ensure potential starts of the future were given a second chance despite being released.

McGhee said "We had a presence at the exit trails because we will leave no stone unturned in a bid to find quality players."

RedWeb spoke exclusively to Head of Scouting Colin Grant who spent time at the trails.

"At this time of the year, every year the English FA hold what they call assessment / exit trails on three consecutive days on the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Monday was at Bisham Abbey near Reading, Tuesday was at Welbeck College, Loughborough and Wednesday at Leeds United training grounds. Between Craig Robertson and myself we covered all three days.

"The purpose of the trails is to give the players who have not quite made it at their club's academies, the chance to get another club before the rat race at the end of the season. The players are told by their clubs that they are being released in January, February time and then the FA puts on this three day event.

"At each trial there are four games going on at the same time! The games start at 1.00pm in the afternoon. Then the yellows play the blues the whites play the greens, then the blues play the whites and so on. They all swap about. You only really get a snap shot because they are playing four games at the same time. It is quite hard work but obviously if you see someone you like you will stand and watch them for a while and take some notes.

"From that we have identified a number of different players. We then got them to send up their CVs and then decide which ones we want to bring up. You also do research and you phone to get a reference from the clubs.

"We will then bring the players we like up during the Easter week for our AFC Scoccer Academy week. We have our Academy week three times a year, Easter, Summer and October. During that time we bring everyone together from all the centres.

"The players from the trials will join in the coaching with the 15s or 17s depending upon which age group they fit. In total we will have over 30 kids from our centres at the club over the Easter period. We also have all the coaches from the various centres including Peter Weir from Glasgow so all the coaches can have a proper look at the trialists at one time.

"The kids are all in the 16 and 17 age range. Many of them are of a good pedigree. They have previously played at Premiership clubs. We have done our research on all of them and at the end of the day, we can only bring them up, and all of them are very keen to come up.

"Although we are competing against a lot of clubs the Aberdeen name still holds a lot of respect down south and you find parents are keen to pay to fly their kids up. Aberdeen is still quite a name.

"The standard is high. For example there is one player we are looking at who is at a big club but is recovering from an injury. It might be that someone has overtaken him in their Academy while he has been out and he has been pushed to the back of the queue. That is not to say he is a poor player. Some other players just need a fresh start. From doing the research it shows they are of a high standard.

"We will just access them and if need be we will call them back.

"Hopefully we will get a few players from it. At 15, 16 it is worth taking a chance on them."